Honeysuckle
by kabukimono
Summary: On cold nights, Edea often comes to Alternis's room to stay with him until dawn. Together, they talk and laugh and sleep, and he finds comfort in something only she can give him. They live in Eternia. Cold nights are nearly every night...


"Alternis, your hair is getting long," Edea remarked to him late one night. He flinched; her fingers had gotten caught in some of the tangles and he had just thought the same thing.

"I had thought to grow it out," he replied, lifting a hand to touch his ponytail. His hair had been long throughout most of his life - in Florem, there was no need to cut it, after all, and while his hair had been shorn short upon his arrival in Eternia for "hygienic purposes", he had slowly been growing out since then. The Lord Marshal had hair nearly as long as any woman, why couldn't his be the same?

Edea giggled, and the sound of it set his heart leaping. "Did you now? It certainly seems to suit you." She tugged on his hair again, as though attempting to comb out the tangles with her hand.

Alternis cleared his throat, not least to disguise any noise he might make when she tugged a tad too harshly. "I am glad you think so," he finally said, once the worst of the tangles were gone.

The two of them settled into a comfortable silence, and he found himself closing his eyes as her short, somewhat-bitten nails continued to massage his scalp. That was a nice feeling, much more appreciated compared to the fights they'd had previously.

Edea had seemed determine to make up to him all the arguing they'd had during the course of her months long journey with the Wind Vestal. It had been somewhat unnerving at first, really.

He'd spent several weeks in the Central Healing Tower, recovering from broken bones, abrasions, and a concussion; miraculous injuries considering the height of his fall from the Grandship. Once she had returned to Eternia, Edea had visited him nearly every other day. Try as he might, he couldn't help but be pleased during her visits, even though he had been repeatedly reminded of *why* exactly he'd fallen from the airship.

She was sorry, she'd said, for not listening to him. For being so stubborn and not even allowing him to explaining the reasoning behind all of his actions. For not *recognizing* him, she added, much to his confusion. Ah right, that man who had looked so much like him. That man that had been him in another time and place.

When he'd finally been released with a clean bill of health and had gone back to work, Edea had declared that they would have to, without exception, eat dinner together once a week. Preferably, her mother and father would also be with them, but given the unpredictable nature of Mahzer's illness, and the Grand Marshal's own slow recovery on top of rebuilding Eternia's reputation, more often than not it was just the two of them, not that he had any room to complain.

Dinner had then begun to involve late night discussions over coffee (or in Edea's case, hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream). Then Edea had added on second dessert - the time of night right before one went to bed and needed a little bit of sugar to warm up one's insides before getting into the covers, she claimed. When the nights turned colder (colder for Eternia, at least), Edea had cajoled him into allowing her to spend the night in his bed, as they had when they were children, and promised that any and all snacks she brought wouldn't be the sort to leave crumbs (that promise had lasted about three hours).

Now, it was nearly every night that Edea would show up as his door, holding one of her down blankets over her shoulders as she waited for him to let her in. The instant that he unlocked the door for her, she'd bound over the threshold, kick off her wool slippers, and get into his bed, already warmed with a brick straight from the small wooden stove in the corner.

And since she called dibs on his swath of pillows, ones he had collected over the years or been given as gifts, this meant that the only place he had to rest his head was her shoulder.

As Edea was roughly a foot shorter than he, he felt more than a bit silly doing so. He never protested though, or attempted to get his pillows back. Somehow… this felt right.

Edea's pajamas were thick flannel that covered her from head to toe, as was common in Eternia. His own were the same, though he often wore a thin undershirt underneath as well, in case he got drunk and decided that his pajamas were too warm… which happened all too often. Add that to the blankets and the warm brick, and it was very cozy indeed.

Alternis yawned and squinched his eyes, trying not to nuzzle into Edea's shoulder, even if she had once remarked that he *could*. That didn't mean that he should.

Edea yawned in return and stretched with a loud noise, tugging on his hair one last time.

"Ow," he grumbled. Edea had been treating him like a teddy bear lately, and he knew exactly how she had treated her stuffed animals as a child, before they had been roughly tossed aside in favor of sword and shield.

"That didn't hurt at all," she replied through her yawn, and snuggled deeper into his pillows. Her arms wound tight around his shoulder and tugged him closer. His nose pressed into her bare shoulder, where the fabric had been shifted aside due to her fidgeting.

It wasn't just the heat of their bodies underneath several layers of blankets that made him feel warm.

Alternis sighed, then attempted to stifle it. Honestly, sometimes she made it warm enough that he might almost prefer sleeping alone, but Edea had made up her mind that they occasionally needed sleepovers, just like the old times when they were both young and could stay up for hours on end reading scary stories to each other. Well, she was the one who did the reading. He would listen.

Despite his protests that they were no longer children, and that the stories were nothing compared to the reality of their world (she had laughed at that, and called him too serious), Edea insisted on the nightly ritual.

And so, he used her shoulder as a pillow, and she used his pillow as a pillow, and he would listen to Edea snore until late in the morning when exhaustion finally won out over the pain in his ears.


End file.
